The Apostate Church & How We Got Here

At one time I attended a church that seemed to me more conservative than most. In time, I realized the pastor was contradicting himself on the issue of obedience to Christ. He would say we must obey and that disobedience was unacceptable. But later he would say disobedience can never cancel grace. (False grace message refuted here.)

This pastor even taught that Samson had committed suicide; therefore we can be sure that some people who commit suicide die saved (a dangerous lie–Samson wanted to die, but left his fate in God’s hands). I confronted the pastor on this teaching, and was quickly labeled a Pharisee. Sadly, a couple years after I left this church, one of the young people committed suicide by purposely laying his head on train tracks.

There was a children’s Sunday School teacher brazenly teaching the children, including my son, that they were “once saved always saved.” When I asked the pastor why this teacher was allowed to teach contrary to official church doctrine, I never got an answer. As far as I know, the false grace teacher continued to teach long after I left. Perhaps he was a good tither.

Recently I saw pictures of the pastor’s daughter, who has grown to adulthood since I left the church. She and the assistant pastor’s daughter both have public pictures of themselves in the most revealing, immodest clothes, complete with pouty lips and seductive poses. How tragically sad, this road that they are on.

I was told by someone, “You can’t blame the church.”

Well, I know that free will plays a huge part in what our kids do. Not every parent or church is to blame for their choices. God Himself is a perfect parent whose children go astray.

Yet I think this is a fair question: What role did the church’s false doctrine play in these kids going astray? A friend of mine has written a good article on this subject entitled “Careless Doctrines Damn.” Read it here.

Did the young man who ended his life on a train track think he was about to be welcomed into heaven–even though he was not enduring to the end of his life in hope?

Could phrases from the pulpit like “You cannot out-sin the grace of God” cause young girls to think that playing with the sins of seduction and immorality will have no real consequences? I say they can.

Incidentally, shortly after I rebuked one of these young ladies for being a poor role-model for younger girls (among other things), another girl from the church–maybe 12 or 13 years old–expressed her approval of the picture. This child has found her Brittany Spears to follow, not on the world’s stage, but in her church. With church “family” like this, who needs the world to lead them astray? Now our kids can all go astray together, take communion on Sunday morning, and think all is well. After all, nobody is correcting their behavior because they are afraid of being called legalists and Pharisees. Keep yourself unspotted from the world?! That’s for religious people. We’re all about relationship here, baby.

But what does Scripture say?–

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. (Eph. 5:3)

There must not be even a hint!!Oh, that Apostle Paul; he was quite the legalist! If only we could throw HIM out of our church and get away with it.

Some say if America doesn’t turn around, America is doomed. They say this quite piously because they go to church and have conservative values like “I disagree with homosexual marriage.” Meanwhile their own kids–sometimes churched and homeschooled–are becoming prostitutes right before their eyes. And that’s just the tip of the noticeable iceberg. Under strong delusion, you don’t realize how big the problem is until your boat starts sinking, and the shock and horror of it all causes your heart to melt. Once the labor pains begin, the unrighteous harvest you’ve been sowing all along is brought forth, ready or not (Isa. 13:6-8). But for now, we are for the most part content to lament the good old days of America, and hope that our church attendance and/or voting records mean something.

Apostate Jerusalem pats herself on the back and says, “Thank God I am not like the Gentiles” even as she herself rejects God’s Word. But I do not speak of the Jews; I speak of the apostate New Testament church, who has followed her older sister down the same careless path. She does not see her paupery, her nakedness or her need for repentance. When her children are destroyed, she laments and asks, “Why?!” But she cannot receive the truthful answer that it is her fault for mishandling the Word and allowing leaven to spread unchecked. She can’t accept the truth–that she is drunk with the world and its ways, and the blood of the true saints who tried in vain to correct her.

Thus the necessity of continuing to blame those rotten liberals for all of her problems.